GANGUBAI: A FEMINISM OF TRAPPED WOMEN

SHE IS BOTH GODDESS AND BITCH, VICTIM AND VICTOR, SOCIETAL VENOM AND VENUS.. PRESIDING OVER HER DUBIOUS BUT HEARTY QUEENDOM. SANGEETA WADDHWANI RESPONDS TO A PREDICTABLE PLOT RENDERED WITH REFRESHING FIDELITY

The Bhagavad Gita says that when a soul is embodied and has to then feed that body, that itself makes the human condition ashubh (inauspicious). We all become creatures subject to the law of give and take, the civilized warfare of ‘business, ‘ swimming in a river of transactions. Western existentialist philosophy too looks at this business of surviving, negotiating the Godless Universe with only ‘the Greater Common Good’  as a moral compass…as part of the Human Condition.

Gangubhai is a true story recorded in investigative journalist S Hussain Zaidi’s book, co-written with Jean Borges, titled The Mafia Queens of Mumbai. And as one would expect, it traces the journey of a 16-year-old minor, from Kathiawad, Gujarat, who elopes with her family accountant (who lures her to Bombay promising her a role in a Dev Anand film) but dumps her in Kamathipura, for the princely sum of Rs 500 (in the book…in the film it is Rs 1000).

Ganga becomes Gangu by her own volition, once she is violated and sees that this world has no real escape. Her respected family, filled with lawyers,  has other daughters to marry off…

What the book says is that once she adopts the life of a sex worker  Gangu actually becomes so good at her ‘job’ that she is the most in-demand prostitute in her brothel. There is, however, a devilish Pathan client whose horrific abuse – unchallenged by the Madam of the brothel for fear of the police – leads her to seek revenge…and that is the turning point of her hapless situation.

Gangu boldly goes where no prostitute ever has…meets Kareem Lala who heads the Pathan gang and shows him the terrible wounds inflicted by his henchman, that had her reduced to an invalid in a hospital, disfigured, broken physically and emotionally numb. She tells him how the animal left her uncompensated despite violent rape episodes. Kareem lowers his head seeing the cruel scarring of her fragile body and a platonic brother sister bond between this Lamington Road Don and the born-to-lead Gangu, powers her already spirited journey.

Right there we see an ever stronger young woman who can no longer be controlled by the Madam. And who seeks a life of some respect, recognition and even legitimate frameworks for sex workers condemned to be outcasts even though the most powerful Seths, power brokers and underworld dons frequent Kamathipura.

How this young woman travels in her first train ride from a respectable Kathiawad family to the urban Hades of Kamathipura, and then years later, boards another train from Kamathipura to the PM’s office, as an elected President of Kamathipura,  carrying within her a mission to find justice for the 4000 prostitutes under her charge …this is the brilliant trajectory of Gangubai.

But what makes this a highly resonant film? At the thespian level, Alia Bhatt. Many who have seen trailers of the film denounced a young Alia’s suitability for a role of a hardened, insouciant, warrior of a woman steeped in underworld ways of seeing and being.  What they don’t see is that Gangubhai’s own journey started at age 16 and she rose to power while still in her 20s, mid-20s…her triumphant years occurring in her early 30s. This makes Alia’s youth in consonance with the character.

Second, Sanjay Leela Bhansali is known to elicit pure magic from actors, throwing them into the Universe they need to inhabit, letting them become one with it. Ranveer had shared with me how he had isolated himself for a year from people, living in an apartment in Film City when getting into the evil psychology of Allaudin Khilji. So dark was that time for a man of Ranveer’s usual light disposition  that he even felt he saw Alaudin’s shadow once on the set! And even when we spoke of Allaudin the vanity van lights started to go on and off and the van started to shake, earthquake style …his immersion took over even our interview moments!

Alia who has led a fairly sheltered life as daughter to Mahesh Bhatt and Soni Razdan, has only ever tackled heavier and grimmer realities through the characters she has played. Remember Veera in Highway? Mary Jane in Udta Punjab?

Gangu’s pain IS her power. So much so, even when a chocolate boy (her tailor’s son) crushes on her, she plays with him as with a toy, not seeming capable of a vanilla love story any longer. The realist in her gets him to do the noble thing and marry a prostitute’s daughter…bringing for the first time a legitimate baarat through the infamous gallis of Kamathipura…and through her veil of unseen tears, we slowly understand that she truly has her family’s legal genes…she is a lawyer in her DNA…a justice seeker who will trample on her own happiness to improve the lot of women denounced by a world that buys their bodies and discards them.

The dialogues in certain scenes may well become iconic…the concluding lines if I remember them correctly…”Hassi unke kismat mein nahin..rona unke fitrat mein nahin..” (laughter was not in her fate and crying was not in her spirit)…and also her near poetic utterances to the Pradhan Mantri…urging him to legalise prostitution after he promises to Institute a committee to keep Kamathipura as their undisputed home…the richness of her last four insights when leaving the PM’s office, leave you wanting to run to Google translator to understand every nuanced meaning…!

Off camera, in many of her press interviews, one sees Alia explaining that her true strength as an actor is her ability to empathise with a character. In this role we do see how soft-faces can come with toughened eyes…and “the feminine power hidden in the folds of a saree can be deceiving,” as Hussain’s book tells us.

Alia’s character and Bhansali’s narrative are both augmented by talented screenplay writers… There is insight, humour, and a devil-may-care attitude in all the words she spews…her dimples firing their own missives. She is both Goddess and Superbitch, Victim and Victor, Venom and Antidote…in her dubious Queendom.

And it is all conveyed to us as energy.

Throughout the film, Gangubai’s eyes, often in extreme close-up, exude pain laced with power. When a character’s arc is so laden with a destroyed past, vulnerability, a forced and fallen identity, then an intense bid to survive and reinvent, to bury deep within, a betrayal of a first love for paltry profit, to then continue to sacrifice personal safety for justice… to build community and speak for voiceless and commoditised women.. through it all Alia’s eyes, body language and attitude, are in character.

One point Gangubai should have raised when giving a bhashan at a public political rally, when explaining how prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, and how male lust has spilled beyond the sexual cage of monogamy for centuries, often sparing their wives from perversions, abuse…if I was a screenplay writer, I would have also added that there are many levels of prostitution, which go unnoticed. Actresses sleeping around for opportunities..treated like goddesses once they succeed? Professionals in advertising sleeping around with producers for debuts as models or even to get directorial opportunities? Nobody condems that kind of transaction…but the Kamathipura prostitute is always spat on…though she is honest in her transactions. In Gangubai’s eyes, prostitutes are hafta-paying, rent-paying, police palm greasing, law abiding participants in the urban trellis of give and take….

On a parting note, I remember interviewing Soni Razdan, Alia’s mother, for VERVE magazine many years ago. Soni had a deep sense of regret for having married, as she felt a woman then makes her life all about good wifehood and often sacrifices and even buries the artiste within. “The film industry stopped approaching me as an actress, they worried about me being the powerful Mahesh Bhatt’s wife…saying who would dare ask her to act now?” Her generational dynamic still saw the movies as an exploitative industry, dictated by the Male Gaze. Not a clean place for wives of powerful men! After watching Alia as Gangubhai…forget the sold out First Day, First Show – I reckon mama Razdan must be thrilled to see her daughter taking her abandoned dreams to soul searing levels of excellence. While KJo may have exposed Alia’s blissfull ignorance of political figures, nobody can deny her mastery of character, dialogue delivery and command over the camera as an artiste.

It’s the Era of Heroines over Heros.

Would Ranbir ..the entitled and talented husband-to-be agree?